The Lainie Lovett Mysteries

Lainie Lovett’s passions, in no particular order, are her son and daughter, the fourth grade class she teaches, and the Rockettes - the recreational league women’s soccer team in the sleepy Boston suburb of Rockford, Massachusetts. When Lainie spots the husband of one of her Rockettes teammates canoodling with another woman under the electric jalapenos at El Camino Restaurant one night, she is discreet - until he turns up dead, shot with a nail gun in a half-built McMansion that his construction company was developing.

A huge sum of money has gone missing from the Hopwell School’s parent-teacher organization. The evidence points to a ditzy school secretary, but when she dies abruptly, Lainie Lovett’s colleagues turn to her to figure out where the money went. Did the secretary embezzle it before she died? Did one of the aggressive super moms who run the organization pocket the money? What’s going on with the cute new gym teacher at Hopwell? And what’s the deal with the secretary’s husband and his odd hairdo?

The party celebrating Lainie Lovett’s father-in-law’s birthday gets exciting pretty quickly when one of the guests keels over just as the magnificent golf-themed birthday cake is being served. That he happens to be the most obnoxious guest at the shindig leaves the other guests less than shattered by his sudden passing. But when it’s determined that he didn’t die of natural causes, and a few of the guests, including the guest of honor himself, arouse suspicion, Lainie’s in-laws ask her to step in and clear her father-in-law’s name. 

Summertime, and the living should be easy. School’s out, and Lainie Lovett is on vacation, spending her mornings running sports clinics for children and her evenings playing with the Rockettes. But things get a whole lot less easy when one of Lainie’s teammates urges her to visit Sunrise Village, an assisted-living residence for the elderly, where various items have gone missing: a ring, a jewelry box, a bottle of prescription medicine...and George Vandercloop’s considerable fortune, which he’d kept stuffed inside his mattress and which disappeared the night he died.

When one of Lainie Lovett’s closest friends suspects her husband of cheating on her, she turns to Lainie for help. He insists he’s innocent, but he’s seen leaving the other woman’s house - shortly before the other woman turns up dead, apparently killed after pigging out on Happy’s Hamburgers. Now, he’s suspected of murder, and he begs Lainie to clear his name. How can she say no? His wife is the goalie of the Rockettes, Lainie’s soccer team.